Bourdeto: A Spicy Fish Recipe from Corfu

1. 10 to 12 scorpions cleaned of scales and offal only, leave them with their heads.
2. 2-3 small perches for a stronger taste, both cleaned and with their heads.
3. 1 big Onion chopped into small pieces with a knife
4. A large soup spoon of sweet red pepper
5. A pinch of hot red pepper
6. 100 gr of Olive oil
7. 100 grams of fresh lemon juice, from fresh-cut lemons!

1. Put the finely chopped onion in the saucepan with some oil and let it boil.
2. Add the large spoonful of red sweet pepper, a pungent hot red pepper, and the rest of the olive oil.
3. Continue cooking it.
4. Put a large glass of water
5. When it boils and is near to stick, we add the fish and two more glasses of water until the fish is completely covered.
6. Allow boiling on a normal fire until it is almost dry from the water.
7. Put the lemon juice inside.
8. Wait for another minute and remove it from the fire cause it’s ready.

Note: Scorpion fishes have small bones like nails, therefore are dangerous and you need to be very careful as you eat them.
As you noticed, the real traditional recipe is made with the fish intact with all their bones because it is more tasteful.

In case you are worried about the dangerous bones you can clean the fish from their bones prior to cook, but the sauce won’t be such delicious, it all depends on you.

Also, using another kind of fish can solve the small bone problem, a highly recommended fish is dogfish or chestnut.

This same recipe applies to codfish and octopus, in these cases, you can add potatoes too.